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POPS McCain And The G.I. Bill As this helpful Boston Globe piece explains, the original bill was curtailed during the relative peace of the 1980s, capping benefits at just under $10,000 per year. The new bill, which Webb introduced with Chuck Hagel and Frank Lautenberg and which John Warner has cosponsored, would raise the cap on the benefit to match the cost of the most expensive public university or college in any given state.
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POPSBarack Obama’s Priority: Global Poverty Act $845Billion Carbon Tax If that wasn’t enough to enlighten most of us to Barack Obama’s real agenda, let’s take a look at another part of the United Nations Millennium declaration,this time in reference to gun control. It seems to me, his first priority is not the people of America, what we need is a President of the United States, one who will stand for the rights of our citizens , even if it is against the global interests of the United Nations.
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POPSThe New “Hip-Hop Pastor”, Same Old Message But a videotape of a sermon he delivered at Wright’s church shows this “wonderful young pastor” referring to “ghetto prophets” and “thug theology,” calling the late rapper Tupac Shakur a “prophet,” and reciting at length lyrics to Shakur’s song “Thugz Mansion.” In an interview last month with National Public Radio, Moss refused to distance himself from claims by Wright that the U.S. government was involved in distributing illegal drugs to minorities. In his Easter sermon, Moss said Wright was “lynched” by the international media, and compared Wright to Jesus.
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POPSThe Illusion That Is Barack Obama
For all his Camelot-like rhetoric, Obama is a product, in significant measure, of the political culture that Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass described as "The Chicago Way" At no point did Obama, the would-be saviour of US politics, challenge this corruption, except for face-saving gestures as a legislator. Emil Jones, the machine-made president of the Senate, allowed him to sponsor a minor ethics bill. In return, Obama made sure to send plenty of pork to Jones's district. When asked about pork-barrel spending, Jones famously replied: "Some call it pork; I call it steak." Obama repaid the generosity. When he had a chance to back clean Democratic candidates for president of the Cook County board of supervisors and Illinois governor, he stayed with the allies of the Outfit. In the Illinois Senate, he made a specialty of voting present. Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, in the past two years he has voted with the Democrats more often than did the party's majority lea
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POPSBattle Of the Proxy Incumbents Fiction can be fun! Ultimately though, this fanciful bit of twaddle is unlikely to stick, what with McCain's voting record so thoroughly refuting it. And in a lot of ways, that's too bad. If only we could look back at McCain's votes and comments on the wildly effective investment income tax cuts and find a man who embraced pro-growth fiscal policy as eagerly as Bush, we might be better assured of the continuity of certain beneficial policies that Obama so laments.
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POPSObama Campaign Introduces Customized Lapel Pins Update: It's just been announced that two superdelegates from the Virgin Islands have pledged support for Obama, giving him his first-ever superdelegate lead over Clinton. Interesting timing, no? You scratch my back, I grant you statehood. Handcrafted by Flip at 07:49 PM | Permalink |
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POPSObama & Hamas: McCain Camp Responds: Andy McCarthy We understand why Senator Obama doesn't want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place. Just today, the president of Iran, whom Senator Obama wants to meet with unconditionally, called the state of Israel a 'stinking corpse.' Iran is the paymaster and state sponsor of Hamas. In his victory speech this week, Senator Obama stated that 'wisdom' is meeting with our enemies, including Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro. John McCain couldn't disagree more. Rather than giving tyrants and dictators the prestige of meeting with an American president, John McCain will instead meet with the champions of human freedom around the world and opposition leaders fighting for liberty
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POPSStraight Talk About Universal Healthcare I'm all about personal freedom and the rights of individuals. Universal healthcare is not only impractical, but costly - and not just for your pocketbook. It's handing over yet another right to the government, and allowing the government to decide and rule your fate. I'm not compassionless-I'm just sensible. And universal healthcare as it's being proposed by both Clinton and Obama still doesn't make much sense to me. The disaster of the Massachusetts universal healthcare system should give you a preview of what life under a universal healthcare scheme could be like. Even more shocking is the manner in which Massachusetts state officials have decided to deal with the out-of-control costs of their broken system: they've ordered the insurance companies to cut payments to doctors and hospitals, reduce choices for payments, and possibly increase how much patients will have to pay.
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POPSHillary's Bitter Victory Is there any relief in sight? When will this thing end? The short answer to this question is no, there isn't. Watching this scene, I was struck suddenly by the genius of the Clinton campaign — and also felt myself beginning to understand why this Obama-Clinton contest may yet prove to be one of those defining cultural clashes that come along once a generation or so, like Bryan-Darrow or Ali-Frazier. what we have in Hillary Clinton: a once-in-a-generation political pugilist who, like her much smoother adversary, is amazingly capable of turning weakness into strength. Pitted against physical beauty and inspirational rhetoric, Hillary made herself the champion of everything stylistically ordinary, superficially unimpressive and ignored. And while her opponent won all the attention and admiration, all the teen-idol gushings of the beautiful people, she went for something deeper — resentment at the lack of those same things.
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POPSBarack Obama Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? I guess Barack Obama will ease up on the old-geezer remarks about John McCain. If John McCain, 71, got the different militia groups in Iraq confused during a trip earlier this year, you can blame it on his advancing years, as the Democrats are so quick to point out. But what’s Obama’s excuse at age 46? Who doesn’t know we have 50 states? And there’s a difference between 100,000 and 100,000,000. Early signs of senility? Or is it more evidence that Obama is not a stickler for details. It might be time for Obama to stop calling McCain an old man. texasfred.net
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POPSPopular Vote: Obama 48.9% Clinton 51.1% (continued) in some states, these were not recorded (or whether to count Florida and Michigan:) http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/obamomentum_revisited Here's the remaining schedule, with a chart showing the most recent poll I could find - I used Rasmussen for West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon, a mid-April Dakota Wesleyan poll for South Dakota, a mid-April Puerto Rico poll, and, lacking a head-to-head poll, I used Rasmussen's general election numbers for Montana, which show Obama polling much better, but with basically similar numbers to the South Dakota poll (but note that unlike earlier Obama mountain-state victories these are primaries, not caucuses).
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POPSIs Four Months+Three Weeks Enough Experience? In contrast, John McCain's 26 years in Congress, 22 years of military service including 1,966 days in captivity as a POW in Hanoi now seem more impressive than ever. At 71, John McCain may just be hitting his stride.
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POPSPrice Of Superdelegate Ybarra Vote $20M US, por favor The Democratic National Committee member doesn't parse his words when it comes to what he wants from Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton - an ironclad promise to spend that heady amount to register Mexican-American voters and get them to the polls in November. In a telephone interview Wednesday, he said he plans to remain undecided in the tight contest until "someone shows me the money." When will he settle on a candidate?
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POPS The Politics Of Freedom: David Boaz (continued) heading early Wednesday for a new round of speeches, rallies and town meetings in West Virginia, which holds its primary on May 13," The New York Times reports. "Highlighting the financial woes of her campaign, Mrs. Clinton has lent her campaign more than $6 million over the last month, according to campaign officials." "Republicans have been trying to drive libertarian voters out of their party. But so far Democrats aren't jumping on that opportunity."
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POPS Is Barack a Team(ster) Player? (continued) should be relaxed or withdrawn. But sadly, Obama understands, like Bill Clinton intimately understood, that judicial affairs can be affected by the political branches, such as through sympathetic appointments to the Justice Department and the courts. So it is no small matter that a presidential candidate would consider intervening, albeit indirectly, in a judicial question, especially one involving potential corruption. Who can say at this point whether Obama has nefarious intentions concerning this? But it is difficult to understand what benign motives would lead him to take a position against the advice of the sitting review board that corruption and elections require continued supervision, especially in light of the union's endorsement. We'll see if the "watchdog" MSM pursue this story.
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POPSSometimes Unrelated Events Tell A Coherent Story We don't need people like either Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama to take us backward. People on the far left like to flatter themselves that they are for the poor and the downtrodden. But what is most likely to lift people out of poverty-- telling them that the world has done them wrong or promoting the work ethic. Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine? Or will they have only the resentments that have been whipped up by the likes of Jeremiah Wright or the sense of entitlement from the government that has been Barack Obama's stock in trade?
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POPSSupreme Court Judges: Judge, Not Legislate But just as McCain has asked voters to check his opponents' track record, a glance at his is heartening. McCain, unlike a number of fellow GOP senators, voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, McCain characterized as "a largely unknown quantity" George H.W. Bush's nomination of Justice David Souter — who now usually votes with the high court's liberal contingent. We know that Sens. Clinton and Obama want the federal judiciary to be a liberal quasi-legislature. McCain this week committed himself to buttressing the federal courts' integrity as what they were meant to be: nonpolitical tribunals, dedicated to upholding the Constitution.
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POPSNo Gas Price Relief In Sight Global demand will continue to increase, not just through the summer, but forever. The only answer is to increase supply (domestically if we can't get it on the global market) while continuing investments in research and development and upgrades to our aging infrastructure.
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POPSIs Michelle Obama Responsible For The Wright Fiasco? What can it be that has kept Obama in Wright's pews, and at Wright's mercy, for so long and at such a heavy cost to his aspirations? Even if he pulls off a mathematical nomination victory, he has completely lost the first, fine, careless rapture of a post-racial and post-resentment political movement and mired us again in all the old rubbish that predates Dr. King. What a sad thing to behold. Then, how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama? This obvious question is now becoming inescapable, and there is an inexcusable unwillingness among reporters to be the one to ask it. (One can picture Obama looking pained and sensitive and saying, "Keep my wife out of it,") ?Mrs. Obama's 1985 thesis influenced by? "separationism" offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.
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POPSMcCain-Jindal? Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41. That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number.
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POPSMark Steyn: Grandma Got Over At The Press Club as the real deal. With less impressionable types, such as voters, Senator Obama is having a tougher time. The Philly speech is emblematic of his most pressing problem: the gap — indeed, full-sized canyon — that’s opening up between the rhetorical magic and the reality. That’s the difference between a simulacrum and a genuinely great speech. The gaseous platitudes of hope and change and unity no longer seem to fit the choices of Obama’s adult life. Oddly enough, the shrewdest appraisal of the Senator’s speechifying “magic” came from Jeremiah Wright himself. “He’s a politician,” said the Reverend. “He says what he has to say as a politician… He does what politicians do.” The notion that the Amazing Obama might be just another politician doing what politicians do seems to have affronted the senator more than any of the stuff about America being no different from al-Qaeda and the government inventing AIDs to kill black people.
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POPSWhy Oprah Winfrey Left Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Church Of course, Hamas does the same thing, and for the same reason - to cultivate an air of legitimacy while raising a crop of hatred. How admirable that concern for her money-making ambition led Oprah to leave Wright's hateful pulpit. How sad that Obama didn't recognize the danger to his political ambition. What a tragedy that neither Oprah nor Barack could recognize the destructive, bitter hatefulness that permeates this so-called house of God. Or just didn't care beyond appearances. Why Oprah Left Wright's Church Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons. Winfrey cited her fatigue with organized religion and a desire to be involved with a more inclusive ministry.
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POPSDNC Chairman Joe Andrew Is Urging Clinton Supporters To Switch May 1, 20 Dear Friends: I have been inspired. Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama. The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. That is the decision Democrats face today. We have an embarrassment of riches, but as much as we may love our candidates and revel in the political process that has brought Presidential politics to places that have not seen it in a generation, we cannot let our family affair hurt America by helping John McCain.
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POPSIt's Barack, Like It Or Not If the candidate were the screaming Howard Dean, the superdelegates could dump him with much greater ease. But with Obama, the race issue necessarily comes into play. It's hard to imagine a scenario now in which Obama doesn't capture the nomination, even if he continues to tank. If Hillary's resurgence continues, she'll have strong arguments in favor of her nomination, but they'll have to fall on deaf ears. If the pooh-bahs decide to throw Obama overboard after he has come so close to capturing the nomination, it is inconceivable to me that a large number of African-Americans -- not to mention the far left of the party -- won't believe he was robbed, in no small part because of his race. The nation can ill afford to endure such racial bitterness, but the Democratic Party may not survive with it. We all know the party depends on a statistically monolithic constituency in the African-American community, without which it couldn't even be competitive in national elections.
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POPSCoachella Crew Must Clean Up Obama Flyers As a result, Coachella promoter Goldenvoice has had to send staff to help clean up the papers covering the Indio, California neighbourhoods after police received calls from area residents complaining about the mess.
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POPSObama's Chickens Come Home to Roost Here we see Obama's purpose in equating Wright to the "black community" as a whole: to criticize Wright, therefore, is to criticize blacks as such. It is inherently racist. The purpose of Obama's famous speech on race was to make Wright seem reasonable, understandable, even mainstream. The Obama campaign's hope, no doubt, was that this would make the Wright story go away. But Wright interpreted it as an invitation. If he's so understandable and mainstream, why not go on a media tour to explain himself to the world? And why not use Obama's own arguments to justify himself and browbeat his critics? All of this is why it is no use for Obama to backpedal from his association with Reverend Wright, or to denounce him now, six weeks too late. It was Obama who sought to provide the Reverend Wright with immunity from criticism--and he can't complain when the reverend tries to take full advantage of that immunity.
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POPSObama And Alinskyism The Los Angeles Times, persuaded a Democrat-appointed judge in California to open the sealed divorce records of Obama's Republican opponent to a press fishing expedition. The resulting sex scandal cleared... With a $10 million campaign war chest from contributors, and with no Republican opponent who could garner much support, Obama had an open road to become the next U.S. Senator from Illinois. In April 2007, Obama addressed the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Al Sharpton. In 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama named Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group, as a foreign policy advisor to his (Obama's) campaign. In March 2008, Al Sharpton, a strong supporter of Obama's presidential candidacy, stated that he spoke to Obama on a regular basis -- "two or three times a week." Sharpton also said that he had told Obama four months earlier, "I won't either endorse you or not endorse you.
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POPS Obama And The Tale Of Icarus You know, I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought, either. (transcript of Obama's response to Wright's remarks. NYTimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29text-obama.html?em&ex=1209614400&en=d2ddde5f2a0b02e0&ei=5087%0A Icarus http://www.pantheon.org/articles/i/icarus.html
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POPSBarack Obama's Worst Nightmare On Media Tour The poll shows Clinton beating Republican candidate John McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, in a potential matchup, while Obama would be tied with McCain, leading 46 percent to 44 percent. Among the white voters polled, Clinton received 43 percent to McCain's 48 percent, while Obama landed only 38 percent to McCain's 51 percent. David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, appeared clearly worried about Wright's affect on his candidate's campaign. "We don't have any control over Reverend Wright," Axelrod told The Times of London. "There's not a thing we can do about it. "Obviously, I don't think we would have encouraged him to go on a media tour."
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POPSAn Old Newness: Thomas Sowell There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president -- especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.
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POPSThe Axis of Evil: An Idiot's Guide: David Frum Joseph Cirincione, the man most widely identified as Obama's top nuclear-affairs adviser, last September pooh-poohed as "far-right" "nonsense" the early rumors that the Syrian nuclear facility was indeed a nuclear facility. Cirincione wrote on the Foreign Policy blog: "This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria." Cirincione seems to have been so determined to avert what he regarded as the threat of U.S. over-reaction--so eager to promote dialogue with Syria--that he blinded himself to the reality of a nuclear threat.
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POPSRezko, Wright, And Ayers If you are looking for the audio and transcripts of Pastor Wright's two sermons, they are here. In an effort to provide "context" I will try and obtain and play the entire audio of his NAACP speech from yesterday on today's program. (Michelle Malkin has a round-up on this astonishing speech.) If time permits, I'll replay the sermons as well, even though I played all the audio out there from both on Friday's program. They are the "primary documents" of the controversy, and deserve a wide audience. I suspect the pastor will make more news at the National Press Club, and I'll play that audio as well.
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POPSThe Democrats And Gun Control Mr. Obama's campaign Web site touts his belief in the Second Amendment rights to have guns "for the purposes of hunting and target shooting." Conspicuously absent is the right to have firearms to defend one's self, home and family. A presidential candidate could of course swear devotion to the First Amendment, while declaring that the amendment's purpose is to protect sports reporting and book collecting. And that candidate could still support government lawsuits against publishers, local bans on newspapers, and draconian restrictions on political commentary. Civil libertarians who supported such a candidate because of his alleged love for the First Amendment would be foolish. Civil libertarians who support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton because of their purported fealty to the Second Amendment may be bitterly disappointed.
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POPS'Red Flag' Obama's Blogger Flies Commie Banner Graham-Felsen, according to a 2003 article in the Harvard Crimson, adorned one corner of his shared student apartment with "a Communist Party flag ... bought on their trip to Russia the summer after sophomore year." The revelation echoes an earlier public relations problem in February when a Houston Fox TV affiliate captured images of a volunteer in an Obama campaign office working in front of a flag featuring the image of Che Guevara, the South American revolutionary who became Fidel Castro's executioner after the communist takeover in Cuba. At that time, the Obama campaign issued a statement calling the flag "inappropriate" and noting that the office where it was displayed was funded by "volunteers" and was not the official campaign headquarters.
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POPSObama "in order to form a more soviet union" Dodging the flak over his description of typical small-town rednecks as those who turn to guns and Bibles if left without government supervision, Obama has once again skillfully turned the tables on his opponents with the same maneuver he used during the Jeremiah Wright "controversy": he returned to Philadelphia and delivered a sweeping speech on the legacy of rednecks in a post-redneck society and the importance of establishing a full government control over the redneck territories - a speech that political strategists agree hearkens back to those of America's founders, and deserves a similar place in history.
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